Purpose

The authors investigate household acceptance of central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) by drawing on the unified theory of acceptance and use of technology and institutional trust theory.

Design/methodology/approach

The authors build a research model including six hypotheses and quantitatively analyze it using partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) and importance-performance map analysis (IPMA) based on 282 answers to a survey questionnaire.

Findings

The continuous adoption of CBDCs by households is highly probable and is fostered by its expected high performance, the social recommendations and the existence of facilitating conditions. Nevertheless, institutions' efforts to propose a flexible and understandable currency can benefit its adoption only if these institutions also strive to build households' trust in the currency's system.

Originality/value

The authors provide a full review of the emerging literature on CBDCs and suggest that digital currency offerings can be divided into centralized, semi-centralized and de-centralized control in a meaningful taxonomy. The authors also complement extant studies on CBDCs that mostly apprehend its operational challenges by focusing on the customer side and provide implications to the launching of CBDCs by uncovering the customer-specific determinants of their adoption. © 2021, Emerald Publishing Limited.